WORKING WRITER STATEMENT: MOVE THE PILE

T.C. Boyle is a working writer with the sort of social engagement skills that can’t be taught. He’s got instinct on his side.

Instinct is essential in the work he does, which is writing books and short stories that get read.

It’s a familiar instinct for those who pay attention. And I do, which is why I mentioned a Ken Kesey quote to Mr. Boyle.

Bringing up writers to other writers might be a problem, but not when they carry a Ph.D in English from Iowa and a professorship at USC.

T.C. Boyle is a teacher and a writer. Read a book or short story from him and you’ll see both. The New Yorker has four pages of his work and a paywall. If that’s not a working writer, who is?

Lithub.com caught up with him way back in 2019.

Since the 1979 debut of Boyle’s first story collection, Descent of Man, and subsequently his first novel, Water Music, in 1982, the prolific author has churned out an impressive bibliography of bestselling books, as well as more than 100 short stories. His frenetic and focused energy is apparent in both his celebrated sentences and his sheer literary output.

I like the idea of sheer literary output when I go into a bookstore or library and see one author dominate an entire shelf with their work. That’s working writer stuff.

Kesey Quote Corrected

Somewhere along the line I read that a Ken Kesey goal was to ‘make one day different than the rest.’ It sounded like a formula to avoid falling into a rut of routine and repetition.

That it supposedly came from an early literary light of the sixties counter culture, from a man accused or credited for inventing the sixties, sounds correct. Kesey is known for two books on his shelf: One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion.

He wrote other books, too.

I mentioned the quote on twitter and got this in return:

One writer started a movement of a new beginning, a more open mind, color, and youth; he a thirty year old man leading teenagers. Too young to be a beatnik and too old to be a hippie, Kesey found a place writing about the individual versus authority.

And the consequences. Can’t leave out the consequences.

Today I’m more aware that making everyday different than the last is not the strongest foundation. At least not for a living, working writer who continues to add to their list.

Does this sound like a TED Talk?

“I want to make every day the same, except for moving the work forward.”

More TC Boyle from lithub:

I do all the research, and I’ve said many times and it’s true: It’s like writing a term paper when you’re a kid. You have a subject, you don’t know exactly what it’ll be. In taking the notes and thinking about it for months and months—as a journalist you’d figure out how you’re going to organize your book, where to start, what your thesis will be. Doesn’t work that way with me. I am just absorbing material, and in the process I find characters, and then the characters begin to talk to me and I follow them. It’s just day by day, it’s a day by day process. That’s why I love doing it because it’s always a discovery. If I already knew what it would be, it would be less interesting to do it.

Moving The Work Forward

Wherever you are in the world reading this, find something to do that you can move forward with, then move it forward.

Is it writing, painting, carving? Is is land, a house, a family?

Once you find a focus on one thing, everything else comes into better focus.

It’s sort of like reading boomerpdx: one post can lead to the next, then the next, until down the hole you go. Just know you’ll find your way back.

Most do.